Individuals, Groups and Organisations Beneath the Surface

 Individuals, Groups and Organisations Beneath the Surface
 Lionel F Stapely, Karnac Books
 ISBN 1855753197,
 £14.99

 STAR RATING: 5/5

Whether you are a humble home help or high-flying chief executive, you work with, and through, relationships. If you don’t understand what’s going on between yourself and other people and within your organisation, you are unlikely to do a good job, writes John Burton.

Too much current social care training skates over the complex depths of meaning and understanding. Recently, at a handover meeting in a care home where I have just begun helping the staff, it was reported that a resident was “very confused”. It would have been left at that had I not asked what she was confused about and what was said.

Lionel Stapely writes in a conversational tone and language, which I found helpful. He takes us on a gentle journey using our own experience of relationships and of groups to discover, explain and understand what is going on beneath the surface. He says: “When it comes to avoiding and perhaps denying the existence of activity beneath the surface, ignorance is not, of course, bliss.”

My one criticism is that the book has a poor index, but that meant I had to read more thoroughly.

John Burton is a social care consultant and author of Managing Residential Care